Analysis of Las
Meninas

Diego Velazquez was court painter to King
Philip IV during the early era of Spanish
Baroque art (1600-1700). Although noted for both his history
painting and genre-painting
(bodegons), he is best-known for his portraiture - completing over
20 portraits of the King along with others of the Royal Family and their
friends. Spanish painting
of the period was blessed with numerous virtuosi, including El
Greco (1541-1614), Francisco
Ribalta (1565-1628), Jusepe
Ribera (1591-1652) and Zurbaran
(1598-1664), but Velazquez rises above them all, and - since the 19th
century at least - has become recognized as one of the greatest Old
Masters of Spain.

Originally entitled "The Family of
Philip IV," Las Meninas depicts Velazquez himself working
in his studio in Madrid's Royal Alcazar Palace. The setting is the cuarto
bajo del Principe, the apartment once occupied by the crown prince
Don Baltasar Carlos (who had died in 1646). After his early death, Velazquez
took up lodgings there. On the walls we see copies of several works by
Rubens, including, on the rear
wall, Pallas and Arachne and The Judgment of Midas.

The picture is composed like a scene from
a play, with all the actors in their pre-planned positions, around the
central blonde figure of the five-year old Infanta Margarita Teresa (1651-73).
The daughter of Philip IV, King of Spain, and Maria Anna of Austria, she
married Leopold I, becoming Holy Roman Empress, but died prematurely at
the age of twenty-two.

The actors in the painting include (from
left to right): Diego Velazquez who stands behind his huge canvas, painting
the scene; Maria-Augustina Sarmiento, the first lady-in-waiting (menina),
who offers water to the future empress; the Infanta Margarita; Isabel
de Velasco, the second lady-in-waiting, who curtsies; and the two female
dwarfs - Maribarbola with her battered face, and Nicolas de Pertusato,
who teasingly kicks the sleepy dog lolling on the floor. In the shadows
behind them is the ladies' governess Marcela de Ulloa, and an usher; standing
in the open doorway is Don Jose de Nieto Velazquez, the marshal of the
queen's palace, who draws aside a curtain through which light enters,
gently adding to - and competing with - that from another source, an unseen
window on the right.

Who is Being
Painted?

It is a fairly complex scene, and one which
some art critics believe is more like
a genre painting than a portrait - after all, who is Velazquez painting?
It is surely not the Infanta: he scarcely casts a glance at her, any more
than he does at the ladies-in-waiting or the dwarfs. At what or at who
is his glance directed, and what are the Infanta, the attendant, and the
tiny woman gazing at? They are all looking to the front, towards something
beyond, or rather at something outside the image field, which can be identified
if we pay attention to the mirror hanging on the rear wall (left-centre),
in which we see the reflections of the King and Queen of Spain.

This is highly reminiscent of the Arnolfini
Portrait (1434, National Gallery, London) by Jan van Eyck (1390-1441),
which also employed a mirror to reveal something lying outside the image
field. The same device is used quite differently here, however. The object
represented in the mirror is in fact the real subject of the picture.

So the artist has painted a picture of
himself painting a portrait of two people, whom we cannot see, but whom
are watched by their family and servants. It is this mixture of reality
and illusion that makes Las Meninas one of the greatest
portrait paintings of the Baroque.

Notice how Velazquez deliberately confuses
the viewer by creating tension between the two rectangles at the centre:
the deflecting figure of Jose de Nieto in the open doorway, and the reflected
half-figures of the king and queen in the mirror.

Painting
Techniques in Las Meninas

Velazquez painted directly, without drawing
first, without 'calculating', as it were. He began with the brush, sketching
with a burnt umber, going from dark to light often alla prima ('wet-on-wet')
(an oil painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to
existing layers of wet paint) often finishing in one session - as he did
with the Portrait of Francesco ll d'Este, Duke of Modena (1638,
Galleria Estense, Modena), or the Portrait of a Man (1649, Apsley
House, London). In many cases, of course, he was unable to complete a
painting in one session, but often, even in Las Meninas, he managed
to finish most of the figures alla prima, and later retouched here
and there.

Velazquez's use of colour
is guided by his awareness of the differences between cool and warm colours,
and the possibility of modifying hues by contrast. Thus he rarely used
primary colours, and instead of using a brilliant red, preferred to create
an optical illusion of it. A good example of his approach is the red ribbon
in the dress of the Infanta Margarita. The pigment used by Velazquez is
not vermilion, as one may think, but red ochre. The bright red colour
we see comes only from the contrast: both the cool grey surrounding it
and the point of yellow in it magnify the redness, and so transform red
ochre into something much redder. On the other hand, vermilion was used,
mixed with white, in the Infanta's face to produce the cool light pink
of the cheeks.

In this masterly chromatic modulation,
visible in his mature and late paintings, Velazquez let himself be carried
along by his inner voice, which he may have perceived as his source of
truth. The wonder is that a king could have perceived its greatness. The
general public, however, had no access to the Spanish royal collections,
and so Velazquez remained private until the opening of the Prado Museum
in 1819. Since then, and particularly in the 19th century, his work has
had an enormous impact - most notably on Edouard
Manet (1832-83), who was himself one of the great modern
artists of his day.

Meaning of Las
Meninas

The meaning of Las Meninas is far from
clear. Velazquez was official portraitist to Philip IV (1605-65), who
ruled Spain between 1621 and 1665, during the difficult period of the
Thirty Years' War. Philip was married twice: first to Elisabeth of France
(1602-44), and after her death, to Mariana of Austria (1634-96). So the
royal couple whom Velazquez was painting in Las Meninas was Philip
and Mariana. Unfortunately, their marriage was not a happy one. This was
due to the 30-year age difference between them, Philip's infidelities
and Mariana's excessively pious nature. Added to these concerns was diplomatic
problems with Austria as well as hostility from England's ruler Oliver
Cromwell. So the Spanish court was not an especially happy place when
this picture was painted.

The key question is: why did Velazquez
distract attention from the king and queen? Why are they confined to blurred
images in a mirror at the back of the room?

Most experts seem to think that Velazquez
was highlighting the difference between the illusion of art
and the reality of life. (Obviously as official painter to the leader
of fundamentalist Catholic Spain, he was in no position to advance the
anti-religious view that life itself is an illusion.) This had been a
feature of at least two of his other paintings - the Rokeby
Venus (1647-51, National Gallery, London), in which the face of
the subject is blurred beyond any realism, in a mirror; and Christ
in the House of Martha and Mary (1618, National Gallery, London),
in which Christ and his companions are visible only through a serving
hatch.

Alternatively, Las Meninas might
be seen as a summary of Velazquez's life and art up to that point. It
contains his only known self-portrait, which he places in a room surrounded
by royalty, courtiers, and precious objects that appear to represent him
and his milieu. Was he claiming high status for himself and his art by
association with royalty? If so, why not simply paint himself into a group
portrait of royals - something he did not ever do?